We've got a customer who wants to put a plasma TV in his basement bar. He wants surround sound, but the space where he wants to put the plasma doesn't ahve room above or below it for the center speaker. There's enough room right and left for the other two front channels, but no where to put the center.

We MIGHT be able to do a ceiling speaker, but that might not even work because of some pipes and ductwork taht can't be moved.

Anybody got any ideas or had any success with surround systems without an acutal center speaker??

Thanks,
Steve

Put it into phantom mode; it will divide the center channel info between the fr and fl speakers.

Use a perforated plasma and put the speaker behind.:-)

On modern digital receivers, there is no phantom mode, at least not by name. You should set your center to "none" and let the receiver matrix the signal into the left and right speakers. We've had to do this in the past, and most people really don't care.

The distance between right and left with most Plasmas doesnt necessarily need a Center channel. Phantom works just fine

I really hate giving this advice.

Breath In and out.... in and out....
OK here it goes.

Use a Bose center channel speaker. Och... it herts to say that.

But it's good advice to at the same time.

The Bose Center Channel is thin and can sit atop the plasma. You can put a little twosided tape if you think it might fall. I've used it on more than one install where nothing else whould work.

The speaker sound a hell of alot better than not using a center at all... (even using the Phantom mode).

You can even get the thing in one of two colors. Black or Sliver.

Good luck with your install... Let use know how it comes out.

TI.

I cant disagree more with the above recomendation. UNLESS you use bose for the Right and Left speakers as well.

but still..Fact is good quality R/L speakers in Phantom mode will WAY outperform a bose trio.

We're talking about speakers that are at MOST 50-60" apart. (Less if its a 32 or 42" plasma) NO ONE can really get a good feel of Right/Center/Left movement in 5ft. It just cant happen unless your 2 ft away from the screen.

I hate Bose as much as anyone here. And as far as tember matching the speakers. The left and right speakers are used mainly for the sound track. The center channel speaker is a dialog speaker and is the only speaker in the system that can break the tember matching role to apoint. This is one of those points. So you keep using Phantom mode and I'll use a speaker where I can.

So you install a lot of Pro-Logic systems still then????

I'm in accord with Impaqt here. Timbre matching is extremely important, and you really don't want to compromise your front stage like that. Using different rears, one can get away with that. Something I've also done is mount a pair of in-wall directly on either side of the plasma and run them in parallel as a center, with another pair several feet outboard of them as left and right, this works beautifully.

I agree with no center channel. In this case the small distance between the LF and RF speakers allows you to do without it. I do disagree with using two center channel speakers where ever they are positioned. This would lead to acoustic problems and detract from the accuracy of the sound.

Artisan makes a pair of on wall speakers that mimic a center with mids and tweeters facing towards the middle.

a dealer for 30 years,(I know surround is not that old)
I wholeheartedly agree with Impaqt and Shoe. It is way better to use NO cc than a mismatched one! Caveats..the left and right should not be too far apart. Just listen to it(an obviously outdated and silly thing to do). Make sure no audience member is >30-45 degrees off axis. I use Paradigm Studio 100s, ADP,Studio 20s and Anthem avm 20 , and it works Great. Have done setups with much lesser equip(Denon AVRs and Paradigm Performance spks) and same holds true. In discussions with some manf. this is the way they listen.

Thanks for all the input guys. I had pretty much figured that "phantom" mode was our best bet, but the Bose idea sure was ingriguing. However, I tend to agree that timbre matching is importan and I'm not a Bose fan, so I think we'll just go without a center.

What the h@!! are you Talking about!!! Do you even know what 5.1 and or 6.1 stands for. Your Pro-Logic insult is out there in left field somewhere. You don't have a clue of what your talking about. And I don't think you should install any more system till you learn a few more things.
(You don't take a discrete channel of audio and mix it in with two others and get something Better.)

If you can use the same Speaker's in your system... Well great. Its the way I like to install my system to... But every now and then you get box in a corner. This is an easy fix to get you out. You can go ahead and select NO center speaker. And I'll walk in behind you and piont out how the vocals are being thrown. Then they can't whatch their show using the system you installed because they notice it every time now. The next thing you know... they will call me back to fix your mistake.

TI